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help needed for Mythtv and 3xxx

I've got a 3450 and use it mostly for watching TV.
I can't use the radeonhd drivers because they don't support Xv, which means the picture doesn't display properly on mythtv.

This means I'm stuck with fglrx.

I currently use 8.5, which more or less works with Myth, but it has a few serious issues.
1) Switching channels in LiveTV doesn't work properly if I switch between channels that use different video types (i.e. BBC1 to ITV1) - I get a garbled display and have to exit TV and then go back in to see the picture properly. But at least it doesn't crash!
2) I can't run more than one X session (so no XP-style "switch user" functionality). Any attempts crash my PC hard.
3) I can't restart X (PC crashes), but I can logout a user and then login again (wahay! very useful...)
4) I can only watch certain video formats, as some crash my PC. And I can't use xine, because it crashes my PC, so I have to use totem instead. vlc just crashes if I try to use it.
Bit of a theme here.

For the record, I used to have a 5 year old Matrox card which worked fine with all of the above in the same PC and the same OS (debian testing) but I gave it away and "upgraded" to the 3450 because I thought I'd be able to use it for HD video. How I wish I hadn't bothered...

I've just tried 8.9 but it doesn't work with Myth at all - I just get a corrupt display, which persists for a few seconds when I exit Myth before suddenly sorting itself out. i.e. I can see a corrupt view of the desktop which is messed up in the same way as Myth is, and then suddenly everything looks good again.
I haven't checked whether the other problems I have are fixed by 8.9 - frankly it's irrelevant if I can't watch TV.

So does anyone have any suggestions? Anyone with a 3450 who isn't having the problems I'm having? It'd be nice if it turned out to just be a config problem, but I'm not holding out much hope.

I'm strongly tempted to just throw it in the bin and get an Nvidia instead, but I'd rather see it actually working.
Points 1-4 above are the only things I care about - 3D acceleration would be nice, but if it doesn't work, it really doesn't matter to me.

I've been planning to get MythTV installed, but haven't yet. My laptop has an HD3450 and it seems to work fine with Xv using the new 8.10 driver.
At least, vlc and mplayer can play DivX and such on it.

8.10 has same problem

So I tried 8.10, but it has the same problem.

Then I remembered that this was the reason I was still using 8.5 - I had this exact same problem when I tried 8.6 and 8.7 (and I hadn't had time to try 8.8). So this problem has existed for 5 releases now.

which contains a workaround to get Myth to work (and also shows I'm far from the only one who is seeing this). Basically, the workaround requires starting Mythtv with a nonstandard resolution e.g. 1280x1025. Presumably there's some modeline problem going on when using fullscreen openGL?

I'm getting the impression that this issue isn't a priority for ATI.

So I can at least use 8.10 now, but from my point of view I don't think it actually fixes any of my problems. Certainly my channel changing problem still exists, and as I've only just installed 8.10 I don't know if any of my other issues are fixed, or whether there are any other new problems introduced.

I can't help but feel this is another long-term problem that fglrx is never going to fix. (Feel free to comment on this, ATI!).

So, now that I'm using 8.10, issue 3 is fixed, but irritatingly not issue 2. ATI have posted about this in these forums in the past, and seem to think that it's not an issue because no-one uses more than one X session. Errrm, actually a lot of people do...
radeonhd does this fine, but can't play video so not really an option to swap.
issue 1 is still the same, and issue 4 is partially improved - I seem to be able to watch stuff with vlc, but xine still crashes my PC when playing certain videos. No idea why, it doesn't seem to be the video format that causes it.

In fact the only improvement I've seen over the last 6 months is being able to restart X without a hard crash, whilst running 2 Xservers is apparently a step too far (despite the fact I've been able to do that with every other video card I've owned in the last 10 years).

Not enormously impressed...

ATI - perhaps you should concentrate on fixing all the showstoppers before you spend time enabling more features? Building on shaky foundations is not really the best plan.